I suppose it becomes part of the signature of the caller, so maybe? I guess I was thinking "locally at the call site, I don't see anything corresponding to `if err != nil { return err }`", but implicit vs explicit error handling probably isn't well-defined, so I suppose it's up to interpretation. I usually think of it more in a local context ("is it evident right at the call site") but the caller's function signature is certainly local-ish. (shrug)